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As someone who has worked in education for about a decade now, I use this quote a lot: You can’t understand Google unless you know that both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids. — Marissa Mayer
It is not like they were Abel and Gauss as impressionable tech workers seem to think.
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> had a good impression of "Montessori" from hearing that Larry/Sergey/Bezos went to one. Oh man… survivorship bias thinking is dangerous.
At last for me, the last thing I wanted to my son would be for him to become Jeff Bezos.
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I had a good impression of "Montessori" from hearing that Larry/Sergey/Bezos went to one. When I put my kid in it at 3 years old, he hated it. As I looked into it more, it seems to me that it is actually very rigid, with kids being able to play with just a small set of toys that don't really exercise their creativity, and with little opportunity for group play. We switched him to a Reggio Emilia school where the kids…
Same here. My three-year old loved maps and we always played with them (making map of her room, etc etc) We enrolled her at the local Montessori and she rushed to the map section but was told she is forbidden from using it until she takes the lesson on that or whatever is called. That lesson was 2-3 months away, and meanwhile all other kids were able to play with the maps. This, combined with other rigidities and a c…
Part of this is, I think, to teach responsibility; for example, if a student gets a work out, they’re expected to put it back exactly how they found it. Montessori classrooms are incredibly well-organized, with everything having its (labeled) place.
My children attended Montessori schools, and it really is a wonderful system. I would really like to see an extension of this learning method up through high school --- the closest thing I'm aware of was a school I attended in Mississippi for a couple of years --- classes were divided between academic and social, social classes (homeroom, phys ed, social studies, &c.) were attended at one's age, while academic classe…
My issue with this is that it just is selection bias, telling you nothing about how good the method is at teaching.
Does placing by ability actually helps student learn and score better? Or it's just that those who are good and bad already get divided up, and we know not why some are good and others are worse?
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Like anything, there are lower and higher quality implementations of Montessori programs. What you are saying here does not reflect the Montessori program I went through myself, and I think I can credit the Montessori program with a great deal of my later stage curiosity and drive to outperform. I would say the same of the public high school that I attended. The attitude of the teachers and the other students was fan…
We visited multiple Montessori schools for both my kids and I can confidently say that I met some of the saddest and coldest teachers I have ever seen in my life. I am not sure that is really best environment for small kids. I myself went to shitty public schools and became an exceptional student later on. I am doubtful about the impact of early education on future success.
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I had a good impression of "Montessori" from hearing that Larry/Sergey/Bezos went to one. When I put my kid in it at 3 years old, he hated it. As I looked into it more, it seems to me that it is actually very rigid, with kids being able to play with just a small set of toys that don't really exercise their creativity, and with little opportunity for group play. We switched him to a Reggio Emilia school where the kids…
I had the exact same experience except my child is still there. No free play, very little time outdoors, very little interaction with classmates, no creativity allowed. Unhappy child who regularly doesn't want to go. We try to give her outdoor play with friends after preschool to make up for it.
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We visited multiple Montessori schools for both my kids and I can confidently say that I met some of the saddest and coldest teachers I have ever seen in my life. I am not sure that is really best environment for small kids. I myself went to shitty public schools and became an exceptional student later on. I am doubtful about the impact of early education on future success.
Yeah. In general I also don't like much about the vibe of Montessori parents.
My children attended Montessori schools, and it really is a wonderful system. I would really like to see an extension of this learning method up through high school --- the closest thing I'm aware of was a school I attended in Mississippi for a couple of years --- classes were divided between academic and social, social classes (homeroom, phys ed, social studies, &c.) were attended at one's age, while academic classe…
I can’t find any record of a Mississippi Supreme Court decision regarding a program like you described. I did find evidence that Mississippi actively permits dual enrollment for secondary and post secondary education. Do you have a source for the decision you referenced? https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-37/chapter-15...
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It also had an obvious and unhelpful result. Of course kids who spend all day learning will know that stuff better than kids who don't. What really matters is long term life outcomes. Rudolf Steiner would say all that early learning is harmful and they should have been playing and imagining spiritual things.
"What really matters is long term life outcomes." What would those be and how do we measure them? There are studies that show Montessori students tend to have better executive function, better working memory, and no significant difference in creativity. I'm not aware of any that look at lifetime income or anything like that.
> "Those costs do not include anticipated savings from improved teacher morale and retention, a dynamic demonstrated in other data."
That seems like some kind of supportive evidence as well. Teachers should logically be happier when working inside a system optimized for teaching efficacy!
Personally: we put our child in a Montessori preschool because we liked its emphasis on self-directed learning (I kind of think all learning has to be self-directed on some level. Even a lecture requires you to listen to and think about the lecture, instead of something else). We later moved him to a Reggio Emilia program for non-pedagogical reasons (there were problems with the building that the Montessori school was in). They're definitely different—in Montessori, he mostly played on his own, and in Reggio we now see him in pairs and groups all the time. I have no idea which is better, but his teachers at the Reggio school seem to like it.